


necessity conquers fear

by gaiasash



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: But he is a ghost, Ghost Sex, M/M, not really it's rated t
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 16:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18855187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaiasash/pseuds/gaiasash
Summary: Jason Blossom is awake.“Shit,” he says, out loud, he’s pretty sure. The back of his throat tastes rotten. No headache, though, and he’s willing to take victories where he can get them.





	necessity conquers fear

Jason Blossom is awake.  
  
He is awake, and it is freezing. Freezing and dark, but not as freezing or as dark as it was before. And maybe “awake” isn’t the right word, because this isn’t that. He feels cold and drunk all at once; like somehow he is moving too slow. His neurons are firing too fast for the rest of him.  
  
He reaches out to steady himself and his hand passes clean through one of the maple trees.  
  
“Shit,” he says, out loud, he’s pretty sure. The back of his throat tastes rotten. No headache, though, and he’s willing to take victories where he can get them.  
  
It takes him a day or two, maybe, to figure out that nobody can see him. Or, well, they’re his family, so they could just be pretending. At this point he wouldn’t put it past them. But even Cheryl sort of looks through him even when he winks or sticks his tongue out or flips her off with both hands, or screams _fuck, shit, goddamn it_ at the sleeping lump of her in her four-poster bed. Not that he does that.  
  
But the curtains don’t even shake. And sometimes she says his name, while she’s sleeping, which he appreciates, but she did that before, sometimes.  
  
It’s another day, maybe more, before he decides to go anywhere else. Still. It took eighteen years the first time, so. Progress. Baby steps.  
  
He tries a couple places. Pop’s, the football field, Polly’s house. Not seriously, though, because he can’t will himself to go inside. He always needed an audience, which is maybe the cruelest part of all of this. Maybe.  
  
He’s almost lost track of how many days it’s been when he finally tries the Twilight Drive-In. He doesn’t need to justify it to anybody, not anymore, but part of him still wants to. _I miss the movies. I miss my old car, fixing it up. I miss-_  
  
On the roof of the projectionist’s booth hunched over like a grotesque sort of statue and he’s wearing that stupid fucking hat that still smells like sweat and three-in-one shampoo and Jason wants to snatch it off. Like he used to. So he does, in one fluid motion, without thinking.  
  
There’s this weird static burn in his hand but he’s doing it, he’s holding it, and when Jughead looks up at him Jason relishes the look of him caught off-guard.  
  
“Jason?” Jughead says.  
  
“What the fuck,” Jason says.  
  
“What the fuck,” Jughead replies. The hat slips through Jason’s fingers and lands unceremoniously on a weed. “You’re-“  
  
“Yeah, whatever. Shit’s weird right now, Jones. We don’t have to dwell on it.”  
  
“God, can you even hear yourself right now?” Jughead jumps down from the roof, picks up the hat, dusts it off on his leg. He moves to slide it back onto his head but Jason grabs it again, tosses it from left hand to right. He can’t believe he can do this. He can’t believe he forgot about touch. There’s a place at the base of his ring finger where he can feel a loose thread caught in the folds of his hand and it is burning and buzzing and-  
  
Jughead turns around and opens his mouth to say something like “asshole” but Jason is already kissing him, quick and hard, with Jughead’s lower lip between his teeth, but Jughead pulls away and reaches, like a reflex, to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand.  
  
“What’s the matter?” Jason says.  
  
“It’s,” Jughead says, “Cold. I’m sorry.”  
  
“It?” The corner of Jason’s mouth twitches. “Getting a little high and mighty, are we, Forsythe?”  
  
“Fuck off, Sixth Sense.” He leans forward, a little top-heavy, and before Jason has time to wonder if he could even catch Jughead if he fell they’re inside the booth and he is running his hands under the hem of Jughead’s flannel shirt. Skin, smooth and soft, under whatever Jason has for hands, a trail of goosebumps that follows his touch.  
  
Jughead twists out of his shirt entirely but Jason doesn’t have the luxury. He shoves Jug’s arm back and pins it to the rotted-out beams of the wall above his head. The second he does, he can feel the pulse beating under Jughead’s exposed wrist and that, just that, is enough. Touch is gone. His arm drops to his side and Jason’s passes uselessly through it as it does.  
  
“Why’d you stop?” Jughead says, more of a whisper.  
  
“I don’t know. Shit.” A new new feeling now, and probably the worst one of all. Something in him wants to cry, but there’s nothing. No mechanism. He closes his eyes and waits a beat. “I can’t believe I’m dead. I can’t believe I died and now all I get to do is mess around with you. And I can’t even-shit.”  
  
“We don’t have to.”  
  
There’s a long list of things Jason wants to do right then. Take a nap, eat a burger, talk to his sister. Maybe even push his strange, cold, half-here fingers into Jughead’s mouth, press against him, enjoy the fleeting presence of touch and attention before he vanishes again.  
  
“Why you?”

“What?”  
  
“Why can you see me? Nobody else can,” Jason says. It’s a stupid question but he doesn’t want to ask the other one, not now, not yet.  
  
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”  
  
“People change, Jones.”  
  
“It’s the book,” Jughead says, and crouches to pick up his shirt. “I’m your unfinished business. Shakespearean, if you think about it.”  
  
“I haven’t. I won’t. What book?”  
  
“My book. About you. Well, it’s about a lot of stuff.”“I’m touched. You creepy weirdo.”Jughead pulls his shirt back on and sits on the bed. Jason leans against the wall and is vindicated, just a little, when his shoulder makes real burning contact with the wood.  
  
“So what happens now?” Jughead says.  
  
“You’re the writer. You tell me,” Jason says, and Jug laughs, for some reason.  
  
“This isn’t my genre.”

“Yeah, well. Mine either. Not a fan of scary movies.”  
  
He laughs too, Jason, and it is strange and difficult but real at least. He wants to sit down on the bed, but he doesn’t want to ruin everything by sinking through the cracked floorboards and vanishing so he presses just the tiniest bit more against the wall and maybe, for this night, that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> horny ghost rights 2kwhatever. anyway 1. yes i KNOW the ending is wack forgive me and 2. title is from the laura veirs song "don't lose yourself" 3. follow my twitter @nightmareeyess


End file.
